Creative Endeavours

Month: June 2014

Post navigation

Finished this quilt yesterday. I had a jellyroll of a set of batik strips (Moda) which I’ve had in my stash for a while – when I came across a photo of a quilt like this I thought it a good way to use up that roll. Easy to construct, essentially, the small blocks are a variant of a log cabin, the joining sashing includes blocks of the print fabric and then the outer sashing is solid (although I could have added in small blocks to join up the big squares. In any case, the real challenge was what to do about quilting this quilt because the large blocks were 14″ x 14″ and the largest design I can create in my Grand Dream Hoop is 13.5″ x 13.5″. I set up a design that consisted of 4 smaller elements (there are two difficulties using the large turnable hoop – 1. the design shouldn’t cross over the middle, it won’t likely align when the hoop is turned, and 2. because of the size and weight of the quilt there is drag on this large hoop and so the two sides are never perfectly aligned).

The left side of the design replicates the right side. I wanted the design to embroider the background center block, not leave it empty. For the sashing I created a design using one of the machine quilting stitches and fit it within the 360 x 200 hoop so that it would fill the length of the sashing pieces, and then a small single-run flower for the corners of the sashing.

Here’s the quilt back:

A pieced strip using the small amount of leftovers from the strips plus a 2 1/2″ strip of some fabrics that I thought blended with the original fabrics.

The binding used six strips from the original roll.

Advertisements

Share this:

Like this:

The last full ball of Sweet ‘n Spicy Yarn (Opal) – Finished these socks last week. That was when I decided to go through the leftovers and see what was there that would be enough for another pair of socks. Found five balls of leftover yarn that with a bit of help (by interspersing a solid part way through leg/instep) I would be able to produce a pair. So that’s what I’m doing now.

Share this:

Like this:

I’ve been keeping an eye on the Ichiroya Kimona Flea Market website for a while now – since I met Ann Williamson, a designer who uses old kimono silk to build her wonderful garment creations. This week the Ichiroya newsletter had a link to an article about how Ichiro Wada hit upon the idea for his online business – selling old kimonos and kimono fabrics. The fabrics are simply gorgeous – I now have 9 bolts and some vague ideas about what to do with them – I want to use them for garments, rather than quilts, but I may attempt a quilt using them. A bolt is 14″ wide and ~ 12 yards in length – enough for a kimono! But since I have no use for a kimono I will use the fabric for other projects.

If you’ve ever thought about an online business it’s worth reading the article.